Rutgers to the Big Ten

Cincinnati at Rutgers, September 2009.  My first game as a season ticket holder, and the only time I ever saw the stadium this full in three-plus seasons.

Earlier today, I posted on Facebook that Rutgers moving to the Big Ten (hereinafter referred to as "the B1G") is like Christmas in November. 

As a season ticket holder for the past four seasons, and as someone whose tenure as a Rutgers undergraduate (2002-06) aligned perfectly with the end of the "Rutgers as national laughingstock" era (a 1-11 campaign during my freshman year) and the beginning of "wait, they've got something brewing here and there's potential for the future" era (a 7-5 season and a bowl berth during my senior year), I never really expected a major conference to come calling.  It all depended on our football program (football is often the only revenue-positive sport for a college athletics program), and our football program seemed to be cursed with terrible timing: horrible when the Big East was worth purging, improving when nobody was expanding, and disappointing and failing to meet expectations when the Big East was worth purging again.

I am still a little unsure why the B1G chose us, and if someone could pinch me, I'd really appreciate it.  That said, their decision seemed to have been influenced by some combination of the following:

• Location, location, location: the B1G felt that Rutgers had a good chance of bringing the NYC market, which is something they coveted in an ever expanding college sports landscape.  There's lots of stuff on the Internet today about how NYC doesn't really care about college sports (or, at least, they don't care about college football) - this is true for the most part, but it's worth noting that neither Rutgers nor Syracuse (the only two football teams that could potentially carry NYC) have been a part of the national college football conversion for over a dozen years.  So it's hard to pull the two factors apart.  The Empire State Building did turn scarlet and white in the fall of 2006, though, so I'm pretty sure that the market potential is there; it's more a question of whether Rutgers (football or basketball) can hit that level of promise and performance again.
• Related to the first point is cable revenue: plenty of people in the NYC market have cable, and very few of us use a cable provider which carries the B1G network.  This will change once Rutgers joins the conference (and will change similarly for those in the MD/DC area), leading to a notable increase in cable revenue for the conference.  I've also heard that the B1G network could potentially simulcast Rutgers games on the YES network, due to a recent partial buyout of the network - formerly owned by the Yankees themselves - to FOX (which also owns some portion of the B1G network).
• Finally there is academics.  Unlike the SEC and Big 12, which don't give a hoot about whether their football programs graduate more than the bare minimum percentage of players allowed by NCAA statute, the B1G (and also the ACC) take some steps to ensure their membership only includes academically strong institutions which try to recruit and graduate intelligent athletes.  Additionally, in the case of the B1G, a university's research ability plays a huge role.  Rutgers is a massive research institution and will only get bigger with today's confirmed UMDNJ merger, so that made us even more attractive to the B1G.

There are no bullet points above for performance or stadium attendance, which is good, because Rutgers has been disappointing its football fans with a let down game every season of the last six (costing us a legitimate chance at a BCS bowl bid in 2006 and 2011), and rarely selling out High Point Solutions Stadium (though this may change once we stop hosting Temple and UConn and start hosting Penn State, Ohio State, and perhaps Michigan on a regular basis).  Had these been factors, it is hard to imagine that the B1G would have ever chosen Rutgers.

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While the Rutgers program did collectively step in a bit of shit, getting so lucky as to be hand-picked by the conference with the highest per-school revenue disbursement in the nation, Rutgers fans should take a second to consider how the program will fare in a more competitive football conference.

Currently, Rutgers is ranked #18 in the BCS standings - higher than every B1G school except Nebraska (currently ranked #14), and one spot ahead of Michigan at #19.  (Ohio State and Penn State are not allowed in the BCS standings due to NCAA sanctions, but if they were allowed in the rankings, Ohio State would be ranked well into the Top 10 and Penn State might be close to a ranking, as well.) 

This season's Rutgers football team has an exceptional, grown man defense/special teams and a run-first offense which struggles mightily at throwing the ball.  In other words, they are just like every other team in the middle of the pack of the B1G right now.  The bottom of the B1G is fairly awful, with Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois each holding four or fewer wins.  This specific Rutgers team, 9-1 in the Big East, could easily be 7-4 or 8-3 in the B1G this season. 

Because of our program's history and because we are from New Jersey, Rutgers fans will hear a great deal of hate from haters who have to hate on the Internet in the weeks and months ahead, but assuming the football team continues to recruit strongly and maintains a physical presence on defense, it's likely that the team will play representatively well within the conference once they formally join it in 2014.  I doubt they'll ever represent the B1G in a BCS game, but a good season for the Scarlet Knights could leave us in the top three or four of the conference.

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Lots of people far more qualified than I will be speculating on the next steps in college conference expansion.  With the trend ever stronger toward five mega-conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, ACC, B1G), each conference could have up to 16 football teams by the time the BCS playoff system begins in 2014.  But to conclude my post, here's my completely wacky idea, which will never happen - except that I think it might make sense in some obvious ways:

If the B1G is worried about competition from the ACC to the point that they stole a desperate Maryland program just to corner the Washington, DC cable market, why not make the "evil genius" move right away and expand to 16 teams by recruiting Syracuse and Pittsburgh away from the ACC?

Here's what the B1G would gain:

• In addition to crippling the Big East (once UConn goes to the ACC, the Big East as a football conference will essentially crumble), the ACC would be significantly dented by the loss of two future programs.  This wouldn't be a death blow like that experienced by the Big East, but the ACC would still be left with a fairly geographically fractured football landscape.  They'd keep a few good football teams (Va Tech, FSU, Clemson), but mostly be left with bad ones, putting them in a "Big East 2005-2011" situation that would likely not be sustainable in the long run
• Unquestioned viewership dominance in the NYC football market and possession of the two most important football programs in Pennsylvania, and all of its ancillary benefits (increased revenue for the conference, more money in schools' pockets across the board, etc.)
• An additional rivalry game in football each season (Syracuse/Rutgers and Penn State/Pittsburgh)
• Natural 8 team, 2 division layout (Illinois and Purdue could move to the ridiculously named "Legends" Western division)

From the schools' perspectives, Syracuse and Pittsburgh would get more money than they'd ever get in the ACC.  Of course, both schools may have elected a move to the ACC because they wanted to focus primarily on basketball (the ACC has Duke and will soon have UConn, so it will be a much better basketball vs. football program over the next decade), but I don't see how that makes sense financially since football brings in more money than basketball.

More likely, both Syracuse and Pittsburgh made a pact to bolt from the Big East at the same time because they saw that the end of the conference was near, which was an accurate judgment.  But it now looks like their decision was a bit rash, and Rutgers' patience (or, possibly, their lack of desirability to the ACC) might have made them much more money over the next 15-20 years than they ever could have made in the ACC. 

Could Syracuse or Pittsburgh have said no to the ACC?  Perhaps not (in poker we would call that a "hero fold"), but had they done so, we could easily be talking today about one/both of these schools, not Rutgers, raking in $25M+ per year in annual profit sharing from the B1G.  Of course, this would be moot if the B1G decided to poach these schools from the ACC (which I sort of hope happens, even though it won't).